(urth) Autarchs

[Jeff Wilson]

On 9/26/2010 2:24 PM, Andrew Mason wrote:
> Jeff Wilson wrote:
>>
>> Typhon is the first to carve his face into the western Andes, at least.
>> The Autarchs that follow do likewise, but there semms also to be a
>> succession of Autarchs before Typhon, or at least a succession of people
>> whose minds are inherited by the post-Typhon succession. URTH, XLI: "and
>> I began, as I walked on, to search those veiled lives that lie behind
>> the last, memories that I have scarcely mentioned in this narrative,
>> that dim as they grow stranger and stretch backward, perhaps, to Ymar,
>> and behind Ymar to the Age of Myth."
>
> It's not clear to me that Autarchs eat the brains only of Autarchs:
> the stated aim of the practice is to make the whole Commonwealth
> present within one person. Though of course this raises the question
> who might have maintaining a chain of brain-eaters before Ymar's time.
>
> One piece of evidence that the autarchy existed in some form before
> Ymar arises in connection with the Antechamber; we are told that
> before Ymar, all crimes committed around the House Absolute were
> judged by the Autarch himself. I suppiose, though, that this might be
> another case of the loose use of 'Autarch' to mean 'ruler'.

In that case, what distinguishes autarchs from those rulers who are not?

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >